Coordinates: 52°33′41″N 1°41′30″W / 52.56143°N 1.69165°W
Kingsbury | |
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Population | 4,168 (urban area 2001) |
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OS grid reference | SP2196 |
Civil parish | Kingsbury |
District | North Warwickshire |
Shire county | Warwickshire |
Region | West Midlands |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Tamworth |
Postcode district | B78 |
Dialling code | 01827 |
Police | Warwickshire |
Fire | Warwickshire |
Ambulance | West Midlands |
EU Parliament | West Midlands |
UK Parliament | North Warwickshire |
List of places: UK • England • Warwickshire |
Kingsbury is a large village and civil parish in the North Warwickshire district of the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England.
It is situated between Birmingham and Tamworth (which is 6 miles/10 km to the north), overlooking the River Tame. The A51 to Chester starts from here; as does the A4097, which runs through Curdworth and Minworth before joining the A38. This continues to Junction 6 of the M6 (Spaghetti Junction) giving access to the motorway network of the Midlands and the City of Birmingham. Kingsbury is notable for the Kingsbury Water Park, a shooting range and a large oil storage depot to the northeast.
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The village of Kingsbury forms part of a larger civil parish of the same name which includes the nearby settlements of Hurley, Hurley Common, Piccadilly and Wood End. In the 2001 census, the parish had a population of 7,523.[1]
The urban area of Kingsbury village itself had 4,168 inhabitants.[2]
The name Kingsbury is derived from the Saxon Chinesburie meaning 'royal fortified house' or 'Kings Fort'. The 'bury' part of the name means 'fort' or 'defensive work'. The location of the church and remains of a medieval home (Kingsbury Hall) above the river suggest a good location for a 'defensive' work. Kingsbury Hall (or Bracebridge Hall as it was their family home for many years) is now only part lived in as a farmhouse. It was a fortified manor house and the remains of a curtain wall can still be seen. Kingsbury was founded by the same Angles tribe that established Curdworth and Minworth.
The village is mentioned in the Domesday survey. Two priests are recorded, so the church must have existed. So is Hemlingford Mill, which still exists. It was originally a water mill, used for many purposes including milling corn into flour and grinding gun barrels for muskets during the Napoleonic Wars. Later it was used as a garden centre. A bridge was built across the River Tame near to the mill in 1783. This was single carriageway so traffic lights were installed later on, until it was bypassed by a new road to serve the oil terminal in the 1960s. The centre section of the old bridge was swept away by a flash flood in the early 1980s and was replaced with modern concrete. It is now used for pedestrians only.
In 1473-4 during the Wars of the Roses there was a family dispute involving the Bracebridges and their distant relations, the Ardens (William Shakespeare's maternal ancestors) of Park Hall in Castle Bromwich. John Arden had fallen in love with Alice Bracebridge. John's father, Sir Walter, did not approve. John was kidnapped and taken to Bracebridge Hall. Sir Walter appealed to King Edward IV, who appointed Sir Simon de Montford of Coleshill and Sir Richard Bingham of Middleton to arbitrate. John and Alice were married in February 1474. In 1502 John inherited Park Hall in Castle Bromwich, while his younger brother Thomas settled at Wilmcote near Stratford upon Avon. Thomas had a son Robert who was the father of Mary Arden, William Shakespeare's mother.
The stones of the church porch show evidence of arrow-sharpening grooves, sometimes said to have been done by soldiers but more probably by hunting parties or locals waiting their turn for the nearby village butts, as all males had to be proficient with a longbow.
Until the 19th century Kingsbury was a small hamlet, and the main landowner in the area was the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. The Birmingham and Derby Railway was built through Kingsbury in 1839 and industry was soon established, most notably coal mining and gravel extraction, which fuelled the expansion of the village.
The mine, Kingsbury Colliery, has now gone and the railway station was closed in 1968 under the 'Beeching' cuts. although the station building has gone, the station master's house (built by LMS in 1926) still exists alongside the site. The large oil storage depots, which serve the whole of the Midlands, were established in the late-1960s to the northeast of Kingsbury.
Kingsbury Water Park, which is situated between Kingsbury and Bodymoor Heath, is a series of 15 lakes, situated in 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land. It was reclaimed from the old gravel pits. It is now home to a camp site, children's play areas, a sailing club, model boat club and jet ski and power boat racing clubs.[3]
Kingsbury is now mainly a large commuter village. Although relatively small, the village has facilities and services including a [primary school], a secondary school, a swimming pool (situated at the secondary school but open to the public), two pubs, the Swan and the Royal Oak, a country club, churches, a doctors' surgery and shops. In 2006 its population was in excess of 8,000 inhabitants and is frequently referred to as a small town rather than a village.[citation needed]
Tamworth, Atherstone, Water Orton, Coleshill, Curdworth, Minworth, Hurley, Erdington, Sutton Coldfield, Middleton, Lea Marston, Whitacre Heath, Polesworth, Grendon, Dordon, Wishaw, Bodymoor Heath, Birmingham. District: North Warwickshire.
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Coordinates: 51°34′57″N 0°16′27″W / 51.5826°N 0.2743°W
Kingsbury is a district of northwest London in the London Borough of Brent. The name Kingsbury means "The King's Manor". Its ancient scope stretches north and west to include Queensbury and parts of Kenton and Wembley Park in other directions. Kingsbury was in 2001 a ward and in 2011 was identifiable with the Fryent and Barnhill wards approximately. About 25% of Kingsbury is Fryent Country Park, forming the southern quarter. It is of highly mixed density, ranging from high rise to suburban to a green wildlife reserve in the country park.
Kingsbury was historically a rural parish of a fairly modest 6.9 square kilometres (2.7 sq mi) in the Hundred of Gore and county of Middlesex. It formerly included Queensbury. Following local government redrawing of electoral wards Kingsbury corresponds to the Fryent and Barnhill wards and in all of its various older guises, a minority or all of the Queensbury ward.
Kingsbury may refer to:
The Hundred of Kingsbury is one of the 40 historical Hundreds in the ceremonial county of Somerset, England, dating from before the Norman conquest during the Anglo-Saxon era although exact dates are unknown. Each hundred had a 'fyrd', which acted as the local defence force and a court which was responsible for the maintenance of the frankpledge system. They also formed a unit for the collection of taxes. The role of the hundred court was described in the Dooms (laws) of King Edgar. The name of the hundred was normally that of its meeting-place.
The Hundred of Kingsbury which was originally called Cingesberia, consisted of six separate areas covering the ancient parishes of: Chard, Combe, Huish Episcopi, Kingsbury Episcopi, Winsham, Ash Priors, West Buckland, Fitzhead, Bishops Lydeard, Wellington, and Wiveliscombe. It covered an area of 36,690 acres (14,850 ha).
At some point in the 16th century it was two separate Hundreds: Kingsbury West and East Kingsbury. In 1663 it was recorded as having originally being a gift from Ine of Wessex to the Cathedral Church of Wells prior to 1066.
Warwickshire (i/ˈwɒrᵻkʃə/ or /ˈwɒrᵻkʃɪər/) is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, George Eliot, & Aleister Crowley. Commonly used abbreviations for the county are Warks or Warwicks.
The county is divided into five districts of North Warwickshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Rugby, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon. The current county boundaries were set in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972. The historic county boundaries also included Coventry and Solihull, as well as much of Birmingham.
For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG13) and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region.
The county is bordered by Leicestershire to the northeast, Staffordshire to the northwest, Worcestershire and the West Midlands to the west, Northamptonshire to the east and southeast, Gloucestershire to the southwest and Oxfordshire to the south. The northern tip of the county is only 3 miles (5 km) from the Derbyshire border. An average-sized English county covering an area of almost 2,000 km2, it runs some 60 miles (97 km) north to south. Equivalently it extends as far north as Shrewsbury in Shropshire and as far south as Banbury in north Oxfordshire.
Warwickshire was a parliamentary constituency in Warwickshire in England. It returned two Members of Parliament (MPs), traditionally known as knights of the shire, to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the bloc vote system.
The constituency, which seems first to have returned members to Parliament in 1293, consisted of the historic county of Warwickshire, excluding the city of Coventry which had the status of a county in its itself after 1451. (Although Warwickshire also contained the borough of Warwick and part of the borough of Tamworth, each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Warwickshire was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency, and owning property within the borough could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Coventry.)
As in other county constituencies the franchise between 1430 and 1832 was defined by the Forty Shilling Freeholder Act, which gave the right to vote to every man who possessed freehold property within the county valued at £2 or more per year for the purposes of land tax; it was not necessary for the freeholder to occupy his land, nor even in later years to be resident in the county at all.